RISE AND PROGRESS OF MONTE CARLO.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2675, 21 July 1913, Page 8

RISE AND PROGRESS OF MONTE CARLO.

How Monte Carlo sprang into existence and has thrived in a. phenomenal way as a resort of fashion is _ told in an interesting article in the Daily Telegram’s Monte Carlo jubilee supplement. Fifty years of uninterrupted prosperity began on April 2, 1863, when Prince Charles 111., of Monaco, accepted and signed the articles drawn up by the late M. Francois Blanc, father of M. Camille Blanc, creating “La Societo Anonym© dos Bains do Men- ot du Corclo des Etrangers a Monaco.” “First and foremost thLs was the making of the Riviera,” says tlie writer, “for without Monte Carlo the stretch of coast line, with all its thriving resorts, known as the Cote d’Azur, would not have been the shadow of its present self.” The first Casino in Monaco was built by a company with a capital of £IOO,OOO in 1856, and in that year the rouletter wheel was publicly spun for the first time in the Principality. This scheme with several others, however, came to grief in those early days before Monte Carlo itself was inaugurated. M. Daval, to whom the rights of the first Casino were given in 1858, abandoned the establishment in less than two years, and died in poverty in Marseilles. Another house, known as “The Palace,” now part of the Government offices, was not a throbbing centra of play like the Casino of to-day. “In those days players were not always in evidence, and the croupiers would pass the time smoking cigarettes and looking' through a telescope placed on the ramparts to spot the approach of ‘customers.’ ” | Land was offered free to anybody who would build somo hind of habitation near the first Casino at Monte Carlo. But to begin with, on ground worth £8 per square yard to-day, nobody could bo found to lay a brick. The whole foreshore of Monte Carlo was sold 50 years ago to a M. Brioueboul for £2O and 1 a box of cigars! Passenger traffic to Monte Carlo has risen from 160,949 in 1872 to 1,697,432 in 1912.